The Collegian

Issue date: 3/27/08 Section: Focus

Life in Hillsdale's high-rise penthouses gives its residents a year-round, front row view of all the city's sights and sounds.

From blossoming spring flowers, parades and passing ambulances, upper Hillsdale Place residents get the best view in the city. Some even accomplish window-shopping from their lofty dwellings.

"I see the cars passing by, and I need a car really bad, so I say, 'I'm going to take that one…and that one," said ninth-floor resident Jean Brooks, laughing.

All the Hillsdale Place apartments include sliding, glass doors that open up to a patio with a panorama of the city and its hilly surroundings.

"It's fantastic," Brooks said. "I like seeing everything - I like the balcony, where I can go out and sit in the summertime. It's really nice."

The modern, nine-story apartment complex is a contrast to the downtown area's small town main street. It dominates the Hillsdale skyline, sharing it with a few soaring water towers, silos and factory smokestacks. Built in 1979, the 120 apartments cater to the elderly and disabled.

Sometimes, the heights of a nine-story abode can be a bit dizzying. Ninth-floor resident Susan Crawford said the building's height is sometimes slightly intimidating.

"It's really nice. It doesn't bother me, as long as I'm not out on the patio," said Crawford, laughing. "I've always been a little bit on the scary side of heights."

She said she is now comfortable with the patio and enjoys it during good weather.

"I had a chair put out on the patio this summer, so when I can't go outside, I always go out there to sit," Crawford said. "The breeze feels great, and as long as I don't look [straight] down, I'm fine."

Residents can enjoy a view ranging from Hillsdale College to the silos at Silos Fun Park on highway Michigan-99. They get a sweeping view of nature's seasonal changes. Sixth-floor resident Marilyn Haas and her husband, Charles, enjoy the view.

"I like it up here because you can see all over," Marilyn Haas said. "You can see the trees still, and you can see the snow when all the yucky stuff is here. You can see flowers when they have them across the road - they have daffodils all over."

Charles agreed with his wife's delight of the views. He said his sixth-floor perch is a prime location for people watching.

"It's just nice to go out and sit and enjoy the weather and watch the people and the cars," Charles Haas said.

But the residents' pleasure of the seasons isn't limited to just witnessing the turning of the leaves. It also affords them a fine view of the seasonal work from which they are exempt. The Haas' previously lived in a nine-room Jonesville home. Marilyn took over her husband's raking, shoveling and mowing duties at their previous house because of Charles' surgery.

"I sit up here, and I just watch out the window and sit on the patio - 'Oh, they're mowing the lawn here. Boy, I don't have to get out there today and do it!'" Marilyn Haas said, laughing.

Hillsdale Place residents also have unique access to Hillsdale's variations of light and sound shows.

"Ambulances go by, and fire trucks go down through sometimes," said ninth-floor resident Pete Reynolds.

He enjoys privileged, "VIP" access to July's light and sound shows. Residents get unprecedented access to summer festivities from the comfort of their own balconies.

"It's just nice to just watch the parade develop," Reynolds said. "You can look out the window and see the fireworks - it's about as nice as it could be sitting down by it."

Marilyn and Charles Haas both said they enjoyed their first-row parade and fireworks seats high above the summer crowds.

"We can see the parade, and they go down through," Marilyn Haas said. "But then at nighttime we see all the fireworks explode. It's really nice. And we don't have to be up there in all that crowd with the parking and all the people, and we just sit up here and enjoy it."

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